The new “For Sale” signs around the
former gas works in town has
stimulated questions about what will
happen to the cars that park there
currently when the site is developed.

Members raised questions and concerns -
and held a detailed but frustrating
discussion about the forthcoming
problems from displaced parking when the
St. Anne's Lane / former Gas Works site is
sold off.

Whilst St. Anne's Lane has never been an
official car park, it holds approx
200 vehicles each day.

When this site is developed all these
vehicles will be displaced into the rest
of
the town, especially “free parking”
clogging up residential streets.

There appears to members to be no plan
for accommodating them.

Already, members report local streets
being blocked by workers' cars around
the centre and it is spreading further
out all the time.

There are no answers, currently, that we
know of to
this rising tide of traffic-related problems in our town.

Although there has been a story in the
press about a by pass, we are not
aware that a town study is already in
progress. Thus, our members wish to
stress the urgent need for a traffic and
parking study leading to a set of
solutions to current and future
problems.

Civic Society members are not
alone in town for having real concerns
about future parking and traffic
requirements arising from the many
hundreds of new houses already being
built or planned for the town

One
of the new signs about the former
gas works site

and surrounding parishes.

The Civic Society recognises
the economic benefits of new
development, but we are worried because
we are not
aware of any plans being put in place
for accommodating more cars and people.

Can you tell us, please, what you are
either already doing or plan to do in
the
near future to examine the needs for the
future traffic and parking
requirements of the town?

Any study should obviously contain a
serious element of public consultation.

The society has already
furnished CEC with some suggestions for
expanding parking spaces in and around
existing car parks (Partnership
Walkabout in February .

2015), but these additional spaces are
just a drop in the ocean of parking
needs over the next five years or so.

Society members make these suggestions
in a spirit of helpfulness because the best interests of our town will be
served by an urgent study and strategy.

We do not want to slide into more
parking problems for residential streets
and
traffic chaos in the future.